


heard it break

by scrapbullet



Series: all these things they will change [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst and Feels, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drabble, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 02:24:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10526895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrapbullet/pseuds/scrapbullet
Summary: “You didn’t have this before,” Thomas inquires, fingers passing over James’ ear with trembling gentleness. Once, many years ago, those hands had known only the softness of a gentleman’s life, but now they are rough and calloused, tracing the flesh-warmed metal pierced through the lobe. “It suits you.”





	

“You didn’t have this before,” Thomas inquires, fingers passing over James’ ear with trembling gentleness. Once, many years ago, those hands had known only the softness of a gentleman’s life, but now they are rough and calloused, tracing the flesh-warmed metal pierced through the lobe. “It suits you.”

It isn’t safe on the road, so they make camp in a clearing underneath the stars. The sun has long-since dipped below the horizon as they lay entwined, two bodies made one, on a jacket hastily purchased with coin left over from paying for Thomas’ freedom. The rest had bought rations, however paltry, but the meal they had consumed as the sun had set had been the best that James can recall. The stale bread and apples had tasted like heaven, washing away the ash of despair accumulated over a decade.

It still feels like he is dreaming.

James turns into Thomas, nose dipping under his jaw to breathe him in. The savory odour of earth and salt is grounding, as is the solid weight in his arms. This man before him is no ghost, no, for the lips that find his own are warm and hurried and delighted, even as the ache within James swells and grows at a rate exponential. A kiss is a kiss is a kiss, but there is no Miranda with her quick smiles and wandering hands, here, to draw them together in a trinity of love and devotion.

His voice, when he speaks, is gruff and overwrought. “It was Miranda.” The pain of her passing is a wound not yet begun to heal, one re-opened anew. That she died without the knowledge of Thomas’ continued existence leaves James wallowing in remorse and anger, a burning fire cooled only by the balm of Thomas’ understanding.

The expression that had crossed Thomas’ face as realisation dawned, that James had come for him alone...

It had been like witnessing her death all over again.

James exhales, melancholic. “I suppose it adds to the overall mystique.”

“She always did have a deft hand,” Thomas replies, leaning in to press his mouth to earring, chaste and almost reverent. 

In the dark, with naught but the flickering light of a fire to see by, it is easy to fall into memory, to envision Miranda, the third intrinsic piece of their triad, curled up with them in freedom. She exists there, in the hollow of James’ chest, the rope that ties his wrist to Thomas in hand-fast. The love is there, beneath the sadness. Miranda is there, and she would not allow her passing to quash the joy of this reunion. 

“She was always in my thoughts,” Thomas says, later, when he has pulled away from James’ embrace to tend to the fire, “you and her. That she is truly gone does not diminish my love.” He rests his hand to James’ heart, feeling the reassuring steady beat. “Nothing ever could.”

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same verse as [Two Masks](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8499898), in regards to a certain ear piercing. 
> 
> I don't even know what this is, but my heart hurts. Is it a good pain? Yes.


End file.
